


As You Mean to Go On

by kototyph



Category: The Ritual (2017)
Genre: Books, Gen, Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service, Mystery, POV Outsider, Post-Movie, Too Much Research into Swedish Law, Yuletide 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kototyph/pseuds/kototyph
Summary: “I’m going to take a stab and say you haven’t seen the news this morning,” he says, and turns his monitor to face her.It’s the front page ofAftonbladet,revoltingly enough.Human Remains, Burned Buildings Discovered Near “King’s Trail”; Missing Hikers Finally Located?“Well, shite,” she says.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 39
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	As You Mean to Go On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [illumynare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/gifts).



> This fic is hopefully in line with your first prompt for the Ritual, specifically “I would also really love a story where things initially get worse for [Luke], like he's spiraling from guilt or Moder has found a way to follow him out of the forest, but only if the ending is a happy, peaceful one for him. SAVE MY DUMBASS, BAREFOOT SON.”

The British embassy compound in Stockholm lies along a quiet stretch of road honoring Dag Hammarskjöld, second UN Secretary General and a man called the finest statesman of his generation. The U.S. Embassy hulks across the street, the Germans to the north, and the Japanese are just up the way. It’s a lovely little neighborhood of reinforced concrete and tall iron fences, and there is absolutely no parking to be had on kerb or lot after 8:59am. Pritha is circling the block for the third time when she finally decides to take a chance on a sliver left between the compound wall and someone’s dirty Volvo, and has to squeeze out the passenger’s side door while the guards watch in silent judgement from the gatehouse.

 _“Have you considered biking, ma’am?”_ Sergeant Williams asks over the intercom as she trots past, digging in her purse for her badge. _“A little exercise, carbon-neutral, see the city...”_

“Eat my _entire arse,"_ Pritha says with feeling, jamming the plastic up against the scanner. The door clicks, and she grabs the handle and yanks against the heavy weight.

 _“You’ve got a little something on your skirt, ma’am,”_ Williams calls after her as she darts through the opening the second it’s wide enough, and when she looks down there’s a long white streak of boot grime across the black knit.

“Fuck you!” she’s frustrated enough to yell back at the closing door, and turns to meet the judgemental eyes of a passing group of local staff. “Ah. _God morgon,_ ” she says weakly, and flees to the cafeteria.

The tea has gone lukewarm in the carafe, and she’s barely put her biggest-they-had cup down on her desk before Patrick’s round build fills his doorway, eyes scanning the consular section bullpen and landing on her like a camera flash at a red light.

“Pritha,” he says, jerking his head to invite her in.

“I have visa interviews starting in twenty minutes,” she protests. 

“Not today you don’t,” he says. “Get in here.”

Pritha looks longingly at her dark computer screen, but dumps her coat and bag on the chair and leaves it slowly spinning as she drags herself to almost certain doom.

Patrick, blond, pink, swollen as a cooked sausage, is the embassy’s chief consular officer and as such has the privilege of being crammed into a windowless corner in the only enclosed space on their floor. She’d pity him more but he’s seen fit to line the office with the most obnoxiously colonial collection of gewgaws in Her Majesty’s diplomatic service; it’s a bit like entering a cave lined in Kashmiri scarves and full-size guro masks. She takes a seat at the edge of her chair. “Pat, listen—”

“Luke Davies,” Patrick says, which is absolutely the last thing she wants to hear from her boss’s lips at nine on a Monday. “When was the last call you had with him?”

“We ran welfare checks Wednesday last,” she says, a defensive note creeping in despite herself. “He sounded fine.” Well, as fine as the man ever sounded. He’s not the first British citizen to land in prison abroad and realize the most the embassy can do for him is make sure the local guards aren’t beating him on a regular basis, and he won’t be the last. He isn’t even Pritha’s first lunatic probably-a-murderer.

Parick’s squinting at her through his piggy little eyes like he expects something more, and when she just stares he sighs. “I’m going to take a stab and say you haven’t seen the news this morning,” he says, and turns his monitor to face her.

It’s the front page of _Aftonbladet_ , revoltingly enough. **Human Remains, Burned Buildings Discovered Near “King’s Trail”; Missing Hikers Finally Located?**

“Well, shite,” she says.

“Yeah, let’s go with shite,” Patrick agrees. “The media on both sides are in a froth. We have a request from the local bobbies for an in-person visitation as soon as possible.”

“What? Why? We can’t do anything about— this,” she says, waving a hand at the article. 

“Read closer,” he says. “They’ve found eight bodies and counting.”

“ _Shite,"_ she says again, leading in.

“If I had to guess, I’d say the Swedes want to make sure we have his good treatment well-verified before they indict him as a mass murderer,” he said, almost catching her nose as he swivels the monitor back. “Pack a bag. It’s about sixteen-odd hours driving to Kiruna.”

* * *

It’s closer to twenty, because she’d bought her car off a departing tandem with kids and it’s utter rubbish, gets sticky all over in the summer and starts to vibrate apart at any speed over 65 kmph. 

“I told them,” Luke Davies is saying as a nice and extremely nervous policewoman shows Pritha into a small, shabby office with threadbare carpeting and cinderblock walls. "I haven’t killed anyone. No one. Not a single person!”

Pritha is fucking tired. She’d overnighted next to the train tracks in Lulea and forgotten the plug adapters for her mobile, only realizing it had gone dead in the night— and with it her alarm— two hours after she was supposed to go on. Kiruna is near the end of the long and supposedly scenic E10, the first town out of the Abisko National Park and the King’s Trail with an actual locking detention centre. It’s fog all the way, and she even sees snow in the shadows of the trees along the road. Her last posting was in New Delhi, and she’s really not ready for Nordic winter to start.

Luke swivels on her as she stands awkwardly against the wall, long-haired and unshaven. If she was his lawyer, she’d recommend a haircut to keep the resemblance to the Unabomber to a minimum. “Who’re you?”

“I’m with the embassy— Second Secretary Pritha Patel?” she says, and winces internally at the question mark. 

“Pritha. In the flesh?” he says, looking her up and down. The man sitting to his left must be the courts-appointed lawyer, Erikssen, who looks harried. “It’s not just a phonecall every few months? I mean, I’ve been held here since August without charges being filed, but now’s as good a time as any to show up, yeah?”

“Sweden doesn’t have habeas corpus laws,” Pritha says, stepping up to the table. “Which I’m sure your lawyer has explained.”

“Thirty minutes,” the policewoman says in Swedish. 

“Thank you,” Pritha says, trying to radiate some kind of authority. “Mr. Erikssen? Could I ask you to leave as well?” 

“ _Ja, ja,_ ” Erikssen says distractedly. “Luke? Okay?”

“It’s fine,” Luke says, leaning down so the chain of the handcuffs lets him scrub a hand through his hair. “I’ll be here when you get back, I guess.”

Pritha sits down at the table and pulls out her notebook and spends too much time feeling around the bottom of her bag for a pen; Luke watches her with tired eyes while she does.

“I really didn’t kill them,” he says eventually.

“I’m not here to take any statements, Mr. Davies,” Pritha says. “Just to make sure your treatment is within the boundaries of humane.”

“You— right.” Luke slumps back even further in his seat. “Yeah. It's alright, I guess. They’re feeding me, keeping the loonies from the press out. The lawyer’s useless, but then, so are you.” She doesn't react to that, but he still winces. “Sorry. I guess I do appreciate the government checking up on me.”

“I understand this is confusing, and stressful,” Pritha says, and she cannot find her bloody bedamned pen. “We can’t interfere in the legal proceedings around your case, but there are other things we can provide.”

“Oh, other things. Like what?”

“Like— erm, reading material, and,” Pritha starts, still distracted, and Luke makes a weird, choked off-noise. She looks up.

 _"Reading material,"_ Luke says, and starts to laugh in earnest. Even with the hair and dark circles around his eyes, he’s a much nicer-looking bloke when he laughs. “Okay, okay. Fucking alright. Give me some of that, then.”

She’s not proud of it, but she has _A Dog’s Purpose_ in her purse and no fucking pens. She slides the book over and watches Luke’s face collapse into laughter again as he takes in the cover, the insipid inscriptions and big-eyed retriever puppy wibbling out at them.

“I can take it back if it’s not to your tastes,” she says primly, already regretting the impulse. 

“No, it’s great,” Luke says, pulling the book closer. “Really.”

* * *

The crux of the problem is that the Swedish authorities want Luke to go with them into the forest, to show them where he says his friends were killed. Luke, he tells her, would rather shoot himself in the mouth. Unfortunately for him, where the Swedish don’t have the United Kingdom’s habeas corpus laws, they do have warrants that can compel people to do things like enter forests or face the threat of being charged with obstruction of justice, even if the suspect has done nothing else wrong. 

“You want inhumane treatment, there it is,” Luke says bitterly. “There’s some… twisted bizzaro cult loose and they want me to go back out there. It’s not safe. I won’t do it.”

“I suggest you talk to your lawyer about this,” Pritha suggests like the professional she is, though she’s near-choking on her curiosity. She wants to ask about the first reports that showed up in the tabloids, the ones that claimed Luke was raving about a terrifying mythical monster worshiped like a god when he was first picked up and taken to hospital. He’d dropped that part of the story quickly, if it was ever real and not an invention of yellow journalism. 

“The lawyer, as discussed, is useless,” Luke says, now drooping over his folded arms on the table. He looks so exhausted when he’s not snarling or laughing at her.

“If you feel you’re not being adequately represented, the embassy can find you different legal counsel,” she says, because it's the only thing she can offer.

“No, just— can you listen? Is that something the embassy can do?”

“I can," she says. "But there’s no confidentiality clause to protect the information."

“Right.” He looks away, towards the window. When Pritha follows his eyes she sees the famous Kiruna Church in the distance, and behind it the treeline. “Right. None of this would be new information to the police or any of the newspapers who keep trying to break in.”

He’s not exaggerating; there’s a growing number of press badges wandering around the town, and quite a few vans parked out front of the small station.

“I just… Phil and Hutch, and Dom. They’re dead, but they're still out there. I want them found. I owe it to them. I promised… God. I promised Dom I’d tell his wife…” He takes a deep breath. “They didn’t deserve what happened. It could have been me. It really should have been me that it— that was killed."

Before Monday, Pritha had thought “a murder cult did it” was a piss-poor story to tell the police when your mates were missing in the woods. Now that there are bodies, many, many more bodies than they'd been looking for, she’s not so sure. And, God, sometimes her job is the most useless, terrible thing. “Mr. Davies... I don't think any of us, even the worst, can say that. And from what I can see, you're hardly the worst. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Luke looks up at her, some of that wryness creeping back in. “Ah. Thanks.”

“I’m not a lawyer and can’t give you legal counsel— that’s what we found Mr. Erikssen for— but it sounds like the quickest way for this to end is to show the police where you last saw your friends.”

Luke closes his eyes. “I won't. They don't need me anymore, anyway-- if they've found the cabin, they'll find everything else soon enough.”

“Alright.” Pritha sits for a moment, watching him watch the table. “I’ll be in town for another day, then I’m headed back to Stolkholm. You have my number.”

“Yes. Thanks for stopping by, Madame Secretary,” he says, with a weak attempt at a cheeky grin there and gone.

“You’re welcome,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say, and gets up.

* * *

Pritha only speaks to Luke Davies one more time, over the phone a few weeks later. This is after he's been released, and Sweden’s finest have recovered twenty-nine bodies of various ages and states of preservation — including their three missing British citizens— from the wilderness outside of the Abisko protected range; one local “shaman” has come forward to announce the impending end of the world now that the _jotunn_ have been angered; and fourteen paperbacks have been stolen from the family liaison office of the embassy and sent to the Kiruna Police.

 _“There was nothing out there,”_ Luke says, and it obviously means more to him then it does to her. _“Even the… there was nothing. It all must have burned.”_

“I’m sorry,” Pritha says. “You have your plane tickets sorted?”

_“Yeah, thank you. By the way— how am I meant to get these books back to you?”_

“Consider it a donation to the Kiruna local library,” she says.

She hears later there was some medical trouble on the plane, probably luridly overblown by the press: mysterious puncture wounds appearing and then miraculously fading on his body after they’d hit altitude, which one hysterical grocery rag claimed was stigmata from on high. But British citizen services back home confirm his landing and general health in London, and that's that.

She gets a Christmas card that year, addressed to her courtesy of the Consular Section of the Embassy of Stockholm. It has a return address in Sussex, and asks what books she’s been reading lately. It recommends _A Dog’s Journey,_ if she hasn’t already picked it up _._ Pritha taps the card on one palm for a moment, thinking about the pros and cons of conversing with ex-murder suspects, before propping it up next to her computer screen. She has a pen around here somewhere.


End file.
